Southampton - with new eyes

Southampton - with new eyes

I love planning mini adventures, spontaneous ones.....just getting a feeling that today/tomorrow you're just going to do something different!!

What was I going to do....well money is tight, time is tight, so go local!  I've lived in the district of Southampton for 5 years now, and have visited it lots; usually for shopping.  I'm aware that it has a past, as all places do,  and I thought it was well over due to find out about Southampton. 

First stop was Southampton's Art Gallery, I've been here before a few years ago, but I love it.  There is a real mixture of classic and modern art on show, and usually an exhibition or two.  I have my favourites here......there is a William Holman Hunt - a founder member of the brotherhood of the Pre-Raphaelites - this painting is called,  'The Afterglow in Egypt'.

This painting is beautiful, it is so real......it's exquisite.  When I stand before this painting, I am mesmerised, as I was when I was a child stood before his other famous painting that hangs in St Paul's Cathedral, 'The Light of the World'. 
The other favourite is a whole room dedicated to Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, with his 'Perseus' series of paintings.  Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones was another Pre-Raphaelite painter, but he came in later, within the movement - it is one of the most amazing times of painting for me.  Taking religious subjects, mythological stories and symbolism, all wrapped up in the minutest of paint brushstrokes and a rainbow of colours.

Atlas turned to Stone

From the Art Gallery I then took a slow walk through Southampton's parks.  They are beautiful places, packed full of amazing peaceful trees, plants and monuments.  At the same time the parks are a buzzing place of human life, thoroughfares of busy people, with places to go.

I then began to follow the City's old walls, which were the city's defence in the medieval ages; protecting Southampton from outsiders.  There are about half of the original walls left, and many of the towers too, it's what is left after the blitz and the modernisation of the city took place.  These walls are interwoven between properties of all ages, Georgian, Victorian and Modern - when you look across Southampton it is like a patchwork quilt of architecture....modern and old, side by side.

The Tudor House Museum was a nice little find too, tracing the city's history with shipping and defence.  All manner of objects to look at, from ones you'd expect to see; such as figureheads from ships, and 16th century shipping graffitti, to a stuffed King Charles Spaniel, and Roman perfume bottles.

16th century shipping graffitti

It was lovely to soak it all up, to feel and touch history, to look at the world through another's eyes and be inspired, to share green spaces, to be apart of it all, and to marvel at the madness of the world and people that pass it all by. X

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